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Nintendo breaks US holiday console sales records

The holidays were really successful for Nintendo as the company sold 3.04 million Nintendo DS handhelds during the month of December 2008. They also end the year with the Wii as the top-selling console in the United States, blowing the console competition far behind.

US 2009 Holidays hardware sales after the jump.

Nintendo hardware was also the leader in last month console wars – as they have done every month in 2008 – thanks to record sales of the Nintendo DS. In addition to the exceptional DS sales is the strong sales of the WIi, ensuring the number two spot on the hardware front. The console is selling more than 2.1 million units of U.S. consumers, besting his record smashing November sales of 2.04 million.

But it’s the Nintendo DS that set the bar highest, as no video game platform has ever sold more than 3 million units in one month, breaking the PlayStation 2s record of 2.7 million in December of 2002. Total Nintendo hardware sales were over 5.19 million for the month.

The Xbox 360 took third place, selling over 1.4 million, almost twice that of its PlayStation 3 competition.

Total hardware spend for the month of December was an impressive $1.88 billion USD, bringing the year total to $7.81 billion. That’s an 11% improvement over the previous year, a 2% improvement over the previous month.

“38 months into this generation of hardware, the three new systems have sold a combined 38.2 million units, whereas at the same point last generation, in December 2003, the three systems had sold 36.9 million units,” writes NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “Factoring in the continued strong sales of the PS2 even after the new systems were released, 52 million systems have sold at retail since November ’05.”